The Hosts blended into the dense fog so we couldn’t get a handle on how many there were.
Patrick raised his shotgun, but I grabbed the barrel. “Hang on,” I said. “We need the rock-salt shells for the Hatchlings.”
The front Host lunged forward, and Patrick cracked him with the butt of the shotgun.
He said, “It’s not a waste if it keeps us alive.”
A few more Hosts melted from the mist. Five now.
No—six.
Male and female. Mappers and Chasers.
When the first one went to lunge again, Alex swung at him with her hockey stick. She made good contact. The blade sank into the Host’s neck and stuck. Alex yanked it free, and the body collapsed.
We retreated.
The Hosts followed us through the mist. I could hear more feet shuffling on the hard earth, just out of sight.
Even though it was freezing, my shirt was matted to me with sweat. “How many are there?”
No one bothered to answer.
“Keep the fence at our backs,” Patrick said, “so they can’t surround us.”
And that’s what we did, making clumsy, awkward headway. The Hosts stalked us through the mist, stumbling between tree trunks, disappearing and then easing back into sight. All the while that ragged breathing filled the air, seemingly everywhere around us.
“I’m shooting the next one that gets close,” Patrick said.
“You’ll get off one shot,” Alex said. “That leaves a bunch more.”
“You’ve got a hockey stick. Chance has his hooks.”
“That leaves a bunch more minus two,” she said.
“It’s a fight, not a math class,” Patrick said. “The equations don’t always add up.”
“All I’m saying is, if this breaks down into a free-for-all, we’re gonna come out on the losing end.”
“It’s not just that,” I said. “A gunshot could draw any Hatchlings in the area. Then we’d wish we were just dealing with Hosts.”
The wrought iron ticked across my shoulder. We were moving along the north wall of the cemetery. Which was all well and good.
Except it ended in about ten feet.
The Hosts seemed to sense this. They drew nearer, saliva drooling from the holes in their throats, matting their shirts. Alex swung at one, knocking him back.
We reached the corner. The intersecting fence line ran back toward the heart of the woods. But town lay ahead, through the open forest.
“We gotta keep moving toward town,” Patrick said. “Tree to tree. Don’t get caught in the open.”
With his shotgun leveled, he led the way off the fence to the nearest tree. Sure enough, a bunch of Hosts materialized from the fog to circle us. We swung our weapons, carving out a bubble of space as we advanced. Our steps moved in concert as we held a tight formation. In situations like this, Patrick, Alex, and I didn’t have to talk to stay on the same page.
We reached the trunk and put our shoulder blades to it so we faced outward. The Hosts thrust in at us. I whacked one on the head with the side of a baling hook, and he stumbled to the side, his ankle snapping. He hopped back up on one foot, the other leg twisting loosely beneath his knee.
The weak link.
They faded back again. We couldn’t see them in the fog.
We could hear them.
That was even worse.
“When we move,” I said, “we push past the injured one.”
A breeze whipped through, clearing the mist momentarily, the Hosts appearing at the edge of visibility. We charged for the Host with the broken ankle, knocking him aside, swinging our weapons and sprinting for the next tree. We repositioned ourselves with the trunk to our backs.
More horrible ragged breathing. More ropes of saliva.
It was gonna be slow going.
And yet we didn’t have a choice.
We progressed that way, moving from tree to tree. The mist turned to snowfall, so light you could barely feel it. The flakes spun around us, frosting our hair, like something from a fairy tale.
A scary-ass fairy tale.
The Hosts grew impatient. As we bolted for the next tree, one of the females dove, got a hold of the cuff of my jeans, and nearly pulled me off my feet. Patrick dealt her a jab with the shotgun, and she released me just as my other boot slipped on a patch of ice. Alex caught me under the arm, hauled me to my feet, and we scrambled to the next pine.
Two others took advantage of the opening and charged Alex. She raised the hockey stick just in time, their gnashing mouths slamming into it, pinning her to the tree. Pulling her head back, she thrust the stick handle into their open maws, gagging them. The wood shoved through the hinges of their jaws with a crackling noise. Still the voice boxes lurched visibly in their throats, making gargling noises.
They kept driving into her, their legs scraping up snow.
I jabbed at them with my baling hooks, ripping them off Alex. They drifted back into the mist, quick as cats. When they reappeared, I noticed a new one now. And then another.
How many were out there, hiding in the mist?
“We’re not gonna make it the whole way to town,” Alex said. “One slip. That’s all it’ll take.”
“Not a good way to go,” I said.
“Nope.”
“Plus, then we couldn’t save humanity.”
She managed a weak smile.
Patrick wasn’t amused. “We didn’t come this far to get taken by a few rotting Hosts.”
“Tell them that,” I said.
We made a break over the next crest. At the peak a gnarled whitebark pine thrust up like a giant bonsai tree. As we made for it, the Hosts slanted in at us. We regrouped at the whitebark, flailing at them, driving them back. Our shoulders scraped the trunk, bark powdering down over us.
We were panting now. It took effort for me not to double over to catch my breath.
Above the rush of the wind, we could hear the babbling of Hogan’s Creek. I squinted into the flurry of snow. There it was way below, frigid gray water snaking through sheets of ice. The ground on either side was sloped and free of brush—free of cover of any kind.
We’d never make it across.
There was no point in saying it. It was clear as day.
I tilted my head back to the trunk, my breath still firing in my lungs. “Okay,” I said. “Do we start shooting now?”
“And draw the Hatchlings?” Alex said.
“I think we’re out of options.”
“No.” Patrick pointed. “There.”
At first I couldn’t see what he was pointing at. But then I noticed the faint glow through the pines.
A farmhouse.
The Widow Latrell’s.
Those lights had been burning for weeks and weeks.
“We make it to the house,” Patrick said. “Regroup there.”
We steeled ourselves, gathered our strength. Then we fought and kicked our way to the next tree. And the next. And the next.
The farmhouse came clearer through the thickening snow. A mile away. Now a half. At last it was only about a hundred yards off.
But we were tired. Too tired.
One of us was bound to make a mistake.
I’m sorry to say it was me.
As we ran for the last trees before the cleared space that passed for a front yard, my boot hit a slick of ice.
A moment of weightlessness.
I hit the ground on my stomach.
Right away I felt a powerful grip clamp down on my boot.
A Chaser.
The bones of her hand wore tattered flesh and stringy tendons like a lacy glove.
She ripped me backward into the pack.